


Consider Obliviation

by Chelonie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Grangers, Complete, Fidelius Charms, Fix-It, Gen, Kids don't obliviate your parents, Muggle transportation is a possibility ya'll, Obliviation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 20:17:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17474294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chelonie/pseuds/Chelonie
Summary: Removing an entire person from a family takes longer than Hermione expects. What happens if her father wakes up before she's finished? Can she go through with Obliviating him?





	Consider Obliviation

Consider a witch, who has just _Stupefied_ her parents, so she can excise herself from their lives. She has to remove all the family photos that include her. That’s first on her list. Then she has to remove any evidence that a third person ever grew from babyhood to young womanhood in this house.

The beaded bag holds a lot, but can Hermione fit her entire life into it? Does she transfigure her personalised bedroom into a dull looking guest room? Does she remember to? What happens to the boxes of baby clothes in the attic? The children's books that are still on bookshelves throughout the house? Her bag is packed full of research books she needs for their quest. She can't take  _Charlotte's Web_ or  _Ramona the Pest_ or any of hundreds of other books that will give away to her parents that a small human once lived here.

Consider all the paperwork in the house that has her parents’ names on it. Passports, birth certificates, marriage certificate, mortgage, banking statements, prescriptions, bills, letters from friends, their names scribbled on the back of a photos taken when they were children. Imagine the spellwork it takes to change every ‘Samuel Granger’ to ‘Wendell Wilkins’, matching font and handwriting.

Consider the Grangers’ Dental Degrees and registrations. Recall that if someone checks the General Dental Council or their Dental Schools for the ‘Drs Wilkins’, they could be stricken off the list for fraud. She’ll have to change the records there too.

It gets more complicated when it comes time to change Jean Granger’s name. There is Jean Alice Granger and Hermione Jean Granger. A magical search and replace for ‘Jean Granger’ could end up with Hermione’s own passport reading ‘Hermione Monica Wilkins’.

It takes longer than she anticipated.

* * *

Samuel Granger wakes while she’s feverishly working.

He finds her on the floor in the home office, tearing through paperwork, wand out, breathing heavily.

“Kitten?”

She thought she could do it. But that pet name, in his most concerned Dad-voice, breaks her completely. She falls apart, and he joins her on the floor, hugging her tightly, promising her that it will be okay.

(It won’t be okay. They both know this.)

She doesn’t confess, but he sees the documents, the changed names. “You want to run?”

“I can’t! Harry needs me!” she says. “But _you_ need to run. You’ve always talked about Australia.”

Jean wakes up and finds her way to them, and, sensibly, makes them all some tea. “We’ll sit down in the living room and discuss it like a family. Hermione, you’re 16, you aren’t supposed to make all of these decisions alone!”

There is argument. Jean screams at her. This is the mother who has never raised her voice, not even when she found out that Hermione was using a time machine to take too many electives, whose harshest punishment to Hermione has been grounding her from books. (Most of Hermione's adventures with Harry have resulted in her spending the first month of summer being grounded from all but school books. Somehow her parents never caught on that  _Hogwarts: A History_ was pleasure reading for her.)

“I would rather die than forget being your mother! I would rather be tortured to death! How dare you?! You being a witch doesn’t give you the right to rule over your muggle parents!” Jean screams at Hermione. 

(Hermione would much later see a letter from Albus Dumbledore to Gellert Grindelwald, and shudder when she realised the trap she had almost fallen into. The ‘Greater Good’ indeed!)

“Why can’t we stay in England and help you?” Samuel says.

“How can you help? You can’t do magic?” Hermione says.

“If you're fighting a guerrilla war, You’ll need more than spells. You’ll need supplies, food, safehouses, communication. What if we finish changing our identities but just move across the country? You could do one of those Secret Keeper spells on the new house,” Samuel says. He doesn’t know all the right names for things, but he listens to all the stories his daughter tells him about magic.

Jean nods. “I want there to be a place for you to come home to.”

“You could make an emergency teleport button to the new house, right?”

Hermione laughs weakly. “It’s illegal to make an unauthorised portkey, but I think that’s going to be the least of our problems.”

* * *

The Grangers stay up all night planning and strategizing. They'll have to close down the dental practice. They'll have to make their friends believe they are going to Australia, so there won’t be a Missing Persons report. (Hermione starts to realise that this whole project is a lot easier with adult supervision)

They decide not to sell or rent the house. If Death Eaters targeted it and killed innocent people, they’d never forgive themselves. They have enough savings to let it stand empty for now. (Four months after they leave, the house is burnt to the ground. There is no Dark Mark, but they know.)

When the Wilkins settle into their new house in Muggle Wales, they accept a Memory Charm from Arthur Weasley, who has a lot of experience doing Obliviations. Rather than forget their identity as the Grangers, the Memory Charm just keeps their tongue from letting it slip. Instead of a daughter who is a witch, their daughter is at University in the US. Words like ‘muggle’ and ‘magic’ are still available to them, but they have to be consciously chosen.

It’s a tricky piece of mind magic, and not something a 16 year old could have done - not even the brightest witch of her age. Arthur assures them it’s reversible.

* * *

Consider the lives saved by one additional safehouse, protected by a Fidelius Charm. Consider the muggleborns that can be smuggled (or taken openly, since no Death Eaters are watching muggle transportation) across the Holyhead ferry to Dublin, where Wix Ireland remains independent and safer. (Many of the war refugees feel that Voldemort will turn his eyes to the Irish island once he finally kills Harry Potter. They keep going, to Europe, to Canada, to the US, to Australia, to New Zealand. Some will return after the war. Many won’t. Wix Britain is poorer for their loss. But they live.)

Consider a locket buried in the backyard until the sword is found that can destroy it. Consider teenagers able to sneak in during the darkest times of a long quest for food or news or advice or hugs. Hugs most of all.

(Ron Weasley never storms out. Only hunger and horcrux despair combined could make that happen.)

 

Consider the day that Hermione appears in the Wilkins’ living room, filthy and bloodstained, and says, “It’s over. We won.”

Wendell and Monica (Samuel and Jean) hug their daughter and they all cry together, and she tells them, brokenly, through sobs, of the battle. How Harry died and returned. How her hated Potions professor had been on their side all along before he died. How she saw her Gryffindor roommate of 5 years savaged by a werewolf, and she isn’t sure if she’ll live. She tells them how Voldemort had to be killed 7 times before it was done, and that’s why it took so long.

 

And finally, consider the moment she says, “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wizard Refugee: Wait, we're travelling on top of the water? In a ... fairy?  
> Wendell Wilkins: Ferry.  
> Refugee: How does it work?  
> Wilkins: Buoyancy  
> Refugee: Er... what's that?  
> Wilkins: It's physics. Didn't you ever take physics?  
> Refugee: What's that?  
> Wilkins: *facepalm*


End file.
